- Died:
- January 27–March 15, 1683, Providence, Rhode Island [U.S.]
- Founder:
- Rhode Island
- Awards And Honors:
- Hall of Fame (1920)
Roger Williams
Who was Roger Williams?
Why was Roger Williams banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony?
How did Roger Williams contribute to the establishment of Rhode Island?
Roger Williams (born 1603?, London, England—died January 27–March 15, 1683, Providence, Rhode Island [U.S.]) was an English colonist in New England, Puritan clergyman, key founder of the colony of Rhode Island, and pioneering advocate of religious liberty. Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for challenging civil enforcement of religion and advocating for the fair treatment of Native Americans, he established Providence and the Rhode Island colony as a refuge for religious dissenters. His defense of the notion of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state made him an influential figure in early colonial America.
Education and religious influences
The son of a merchant tailor, he was a protégé of the jurist Sir Edward Coke and was educated at Pembroke Hall (now Pembroke College) at the University of Cambridge in 1627. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1629, though even at that time his theological positions were frequently at odds with the Church. In 1630 he left his post as chaplain to Sir William Masham, which had brought him into contact with such politically active Puritans as Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Hooker. He was also influenced by John Murton, Thomas Helwys, and John Smyth, who were leaders in England’s emerging Baptist movement, and soon became an outspoken supporter of the separation of church and state. Motivated by Charles I’s burgeoning persecution of Puritans, Williams and his wife, Mary, fled England to pursue his by-then completely Nonconformist religious ideals in New England.
Trouble in Massachusetts
Arriving in Boston in 1631, Williams refused to associate himself with the Anglican Puritans and in the following year moved to the separatist Plymouth Colony. In 1633 he was back in Salem after a disagreement with Plymouth in which he insisted that the king’s patent was invalid and that only direct purchase from the Native Americans gave a just title to the land. Unlike many English colonists, who regarded royal charters as sufficient legal authority for settlement, Williams argued that Native peoples retained ownership of their lands unless they voluntarily transferred them.
Invited by the church at Salem to become pastor in 1634, Williams was banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1635 by the civil authorities for his dangerous views: Besides those on land rights, he held that magistrates had no right to interfere in matters of religion. In contrast, the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts Bay believed that civil government should support and protect the colony’s religious community. Williams’s banishment reflected broader debates in the English colonies over the proper relationship between church and government. He left Massachusetts the following year.
The colony of Rhode Island
Williams felt that God’s providence had brought him to Rhode Island, hence the name of the capital city. He also later named his third child, the first to be born in his new colony, Providence.
Consequently, in January 1636 Williams set out for Narragansett Bay, south of Massachusetts. In the spring, on land purchased from the Narragansett people, he founded the town of Providence, laying the groundwork for the future colony of Rhode Island. Providence became a haven for Anabaptists, Quakers, Jews, Catholics, and others whose beliefs were denied public expression elsewhere in colonial America.
Williams was briefly an Anabaptist but in 1638 he founded the first Baptist church in North America. The church’s doctrinal statement included the separation of church and state and espoused baptism by immersion for adult believers. He soon withdrew from the congregation but remained a steadfast believer in Calvinist theology. That same year Williams helped Anne Hutchinson and her followers, likewise exiled from Massachusetts, to purchase Aquidneck (later Rhode) Island, where they founded Pocasset (now Portsmouth).
In 1643 the neighboring colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, and Connecticut formed a military alliance called the United Colonies of New England (or the New England Confederation), pointedly excluding Rhode Island’s towns and denying the validity of the purchases that Williams had made from Native Americans. As a result, Williams rushed to England and in 1644 secured a parliamentary charter for his colony that sought to join the communities of Providence, Newport, Warwick, and Portsmouth under one patent to become one colony, called Providence Plantations. He went again to England in 1651–54 to have the colony confirmed, during which visit he became a friend of the poet John Milton. He was the first president of Rhode Island under its charter and until his death always held some public office. He was of constant service to Rhode Island and neighboring colonies as a peacemaker with the Narragansett people, whose language he knew and whose trust he had earned. His ability to maintain diplomatic relations with the Narragansett helped promote the survival of the young colony, although changing political circumstances during King Philip’s War (1675–76) ultimately drew Rhode Island into the broader regional conflict with Indigenous peoples, and Williams supported the colony’s defense. From 1636 until his death he supported himself by farming and trading.
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Writings and legacy
Williams was a vigorous controversialist and a prolific writer. His greatest work was The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience (1644), a defense of the notion of absolute liberty of conscience. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson would later credit Williams for many of the arguments that underpin the First Amendment (1791), which reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
